16 September 2014

8 Ways to Simplify Your AutoCAD Life with Effective Layer Management

Layers are a very important component of working with AutoCAD. They control the properties and visibility of your objects. Since layers organize your drawings, using layers inefficiently is a time waster and negatively effects your productivity. Even with the layer automation found in many of the vertical “flavours” of AutoCAD, it is critical to understand layers and use all the tools within AutoCAD to your full advantage. With this deep dive look at AutoCAD layers, Design & Motion explores all avenues of not just using layers, but using them effectively.

The one constant thing about layers is they are constantly in a state of change and it’s very common to perform the same set of state changes on a group of layers. Part 1 of this 8 part series looks at an underutilized feature of layers; Layer Filters. Layer Filters do exactly as named; they provide a quick method to filter your layers, reducing the list of layers into a usable “chunk” and provide tools to work with the filter as a group. When you find yourself repeating this process of performing layer state changes to a group of layers, you need to look at using Layer States, which is covered in Part 2 of our series.

Nothing spurs more heated conversations than not following CAD Standards. Everyone knows they need them, nobody likes to use them, and everybody wants their own. Did you know that AutoCAD has CAD Standards tools to both steer people into using the right standards, and to double check that everything is correct. There are various methods to add layers to drawings, and creating new ones from scratch each time is not productive. Creating from scratch opens up the opportunity for mistakes in naming the layer incorrectly, picking the wrong colour, or setting properties incorrectly. Parts 3 through 5 explore creating standard layers, without creating them from scratch and explores the CAD Standards and Layer Translator tools.

What about the many features in the Layer Panel of the Ribbon? It looks innocent enough, not much different than any of the other panels around it. That is until you expand it and are overwhelmed with icons, options, and the many tools. The entire series dives into the many layer options, including exploring how to present Paper Space Layouts with the help of Layers.

It has always been a pleasure to publish a guest post from someone in the Autodesk community. It helps the guest author get more visibility among peers as well as shares some valuable knowledge with the readers of this Between the Lines blog, a true win – win for everyone.

If you would like to submit an Autodesk related guest post please Email Me for details and consideration.

Comments

Layers are a very important component of working with AutoCAD. They control the properties and visibility of your objects. Since layers organize your drawings, using layers inefficiently is a time waster and negatively effects your productivity. Even with the layer automation found in many of the vertical “flavours” of AutoCAD, it is critical to understand layers and use all the tools within AutoCAD to your full advantage. With this deep dive look at AutoCAD layers, Design & Motion explores all avenues of not just using layers, but using them effectively.

The one constant thing about layers is they are constantly in a state of change and it’s very common to perform the same set of state changes on a group of layers. Part 1 of this 8 part series looks at an underutilized feature of layers; Layer Filters. Layer Filters do exactly as named; they provide a quick method to filter your layers, reducing the list of layers into a usable “chunk” and provide tools to work with the filter as a group. When you find yourself repeating this process of performing layer state changes to a group of layers, you need to look at using Layer States, which is covered in Part 2 of our series.

Nothing spurs more heated conversations than not following CAD Standards. Everyone knows they need them, nobody likes to use them, and everybody wants their own. Did you know that AutoCAD has CAD Standards tools to both steer people into using the right standards, and to double check that everything is correct. There are various methods to add layers to drawings, and creating new ones from scratch each time is not productive. Creating from scratch opens up the opportunity for mistakes in naming the layer incorrectly, picking the wrong colour, or setting properties incorrectly. Parts 3 through 5 explore creating standard layers, without creating them from scratch and explores the CAD Standards and Layer Translator tools.

What about the many features in the Layer Panel of the Ribbon? It looks innocent enough, not much different than any of the other panels around it. That is until you expand it and are overwhelmed with icons, options, and the many tools. The entire series dives into the many layer options, including exploring how to present Paper Space Layouts with the help of Layers.

It has always been a pleasure to publish a guest post from someone in the Autodesk community. It helps the guest author get more visibility among peers as well as shares some valuable knowledge with the readers of this Between the Lines blog, a true win – win for everyone.

If you would like to submit an Autodesk related guest post please Email Me for details and consideration.